This blog chronicles my travels as a 2016-2017 Thomas J. Watson Fellow exploring cultural attitudes towards health technology around the world. Starting from and returning to New York City, USA, I am traveling to Sweden, Qatar, India, Singapore, Japan, and Botswana over the course of one year.

Tag: leaving

A friend of mine in Japan told me about the Tokyo Jissha, the ten shrines of Tokyo, a couple weeks before I left. In 1868, at the time of the Meiji Restoration when Tokyo became Japan’s capital, Emperor Meiji chose ten Shinto shrines scattered throughout the city to be the sanctuaries for the new capital. Every shrine and temple has a unique stamp (goshuin) that can be written in a special stamp book (a goshuin-cho), and my friend had decided collect the stamps of the Tokyo Jissha in her goshuin-cho. I decided to get a book of my own, and traveling to these 10 shrines during my last days in Japan to collect goshuin felt like a pilgrimage to say goodbye.

A goshuin stamp I got at this golden temple in Nikko, a town close to Tokyo.

Just because I keep leaving doesn’t mean that it gets easier to let go. I left Japan a few days ago and I’m still wrapping it up, cleaning it away. I feel like I have to do this spring cleaning every time I leave – change my number, close the tabs of “medtech companies in Japan,” tell my friends I arrived safely, and then drift out of regular contact with them. Is it easier to leave, or to stay? I’ve become someone who leaves and I don’t know how I feel about that.

“The 10 Jinga of Tokyo.” This was at Hikawa Jinga, the first shrine I visited out of the 10 and where I got my goshuin-cho book).Hie Shrine.Up the stairs of Hie Shrine.

The thing is, as much as I live in these places and learn to love them and get to know their people, I don’t really belong. I’ve become increasingly aware of the fact that no matter how long I spend abroad, I won’t become Indian or Japanese or Singaporean. I need to take all that I’ve done this year and bring it back with me to places I do belong. I want to know what my project would be like in the US – what impact I could have on medical technology there, where I can invest the time.

This is my goshuin-cho. Each stamp in the book is unique – it has the name of the shrine and the current date. It takes a few minutes to get a stamp because you have to wait for the shrine attendant to paint it in.A bridge in Nikko.Kanda Shrine, probably the most popular shrine of the ten.

But I’ve gotten used to leaving everything behind every few months, and I wonder how that will manifest when I’m back home and trying to build something more permanent. Perhaps I’ll find that it’s easier to keep seeing new things, rather than to try finding new aspects of old things.

The Kameido Jinja is very serene, and the Tokyo Skytree building is visible in the back.My favorite of the ten was the Nezu Shrine, with all these torii gates.

I was worried that my fleeting presence in various places this year would make people feel distant, but it hasn’t. Especially in Japan, where I was worried about the formality of the polite language, I learned that so much warmth can be imbued between the words of formal speech. It’s still hard to know, without speaking the language, if you’re doing things right or just the recipient of excessive politeness, but I’ve gotten closer to people than I expected to.

I also traveled to Kamakura, a town very close to Tokyo, right before leaving. This is the country’s second-largest Buddha.The Buddha is hollow, and it’s cool to go inside and see how the different pieces were fused together.

Still, I’m getting tired of saying goodbye. I’ve arrived in Botswana now – my last project country – and that feels right. I’m used to leaving places, but I don’t want to be; it’s actually comforting to know that this cycle of coming and going, goodbyes every few months, is ending soon. I’m excited to spend two months here and explore one more new place. Also, on a lighter note, it’s lovely to be in a country with fluent English speakers!

At the entrance to the big Buddha temple: “Stranger whosoever thou art and whatsoever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary remember thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of ages.”

A few days before I left, I finally found the prototypical Japanese garden scene in Kamakura. I really had a wonderful time in Japan and learned a lot about the culture there, and I’m also happy to keep moving forward.